Strip Away the Finish
by SabaceanBabe
Summary: A challenge fic written to the prompts: Helo and Chief, the Chief's booze, regret, and a Raptor


**Title:** Strip Away the Finish

**Author:** SabaceanBabe

**Rating:** PG

**Word count:** 1,293

**Spoilers:** 2.09 (Flight of the Phoenix), 2.20 (Lay Down Your Burdens 2), speculation for season 3

**Disclaimer:** Battlestar Galactica isn't mine; I'm simply taking advantage of the fact that that nice Mr. Moore, who does own it, said it was okay for us to play in his 'verse so long as we didn't make a profit from it.

**Author's note:** Thank you so much for the beta, poisontaster! You rock like a rockin' thang and I'm so happy you have your BSG mojo back.

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Last time, it had been Helo alone in Sharon's old Raptor drinking beer. This time, it was Tyrol in her old Raptor, drinking rotgut. A lot of it, from the looks of him. The sight of the Chief, scruffy and rumpled, his eyes so red it wouldn't have surprised Helo to see trails of blood running down his cheeks, caused no small amount of worry.

He stepped further into the Raptor and dropped into the co-pilot's chair. There was an unopened jar of clear liquid on the deck between the seats and another, definitely open and very nearly empty, in Tyrol's hand.

"You okay, Chief?"

The back of the chair supported Tyrol's head as he rolled it toward Helo. The Chief grinned, a little goofy and a lot bleary, but the expression didn't mask the less-than-happy emotions behind his bloodshot eyes.

"Never been better, LT. Why d'you ask?" The steadiness in his voice contradicted the physical signs of a bender.

"Oh, no reason. You might want to slow down on that stuff, though. It'll strip the lining from your stomach."

"Ha!" Tyrol shouted, laughing. "Not to mention the paint from your car." His expression dissolved into a frown. "If y' had a car…"

"Wanna talk about it?" Helo glanced at the green bottle he held and knew that _he_ wouldn't particularly want to talk, if their positions were reversed. When he looked up again, he met Tyrol's troubled gaze.

"I love 'er, you know? I really do. But I think I hate 'er almost as much."

"Sharon?" But Helo realized even as he said her name that it wasn't Sharon that had the Chief so frakked up.

"She's just a kid." Tyrol went back to staring out the viewport of the Raptor and lifted the jar to his lips, draining it in one swallow.

"C'mon, Chief. Whatever it is, it's not worth beating yourse—"

The other man cut him off. "Galen."

"What?"

"Name's Galen. After what we've been through, sir, I think maybe we oughta be on a first-name basis, least in pr-private." His voice was rough and caught on a hiccup at the end, but otherwise steady. He reached down and nabbed the unopened jar without looking, twisted the lid off in one practiced motion.

Helo laughed and slid further down into the seat, stopped from a full recline when his knees hit the console in front of him. He rested his bottle on his stomach and watched the sloshing liquid within catch and refract the dim lights beyond the port. He'd only had a couple of swigs from it and found that he didn't want any more – too damn smooth for his current mood.

"You're right, Chief," he told him, half his brain on the current conversation, the other half on Sharon. _Why did she have to cut me loose like this? Why? Does she think I'm not hurting, too? After everything we've been through…_ He clamped down on that thought. _Maybe she just needs some time._ Aloud, he said, "But if you're Galen, then I'm Karl, not sir."

Almost mesmerized by the way the white of one of the hangar lights turned almost a grass green through the bottle and its amber contents, Helo thought about that a minute – telling Tyrol to use Karl. Kara was pretty much the only one who ever used his real name and he wasn't sure he was comfortable with anyone else using it on a regular basis, frakked up though that might be, so he changed it to, "Or Helo. Call me Helo." He had been Helo to most people for nearly half his life; he was used to it.

The Chief – _Galen_ – took another drink from his jar and held it out to Helo who took a swig and handed it back. "Just a kid," Galen repeated, his voice softer. Then he said something low and Helo was certain that he hadn't heard correctly. The words tumbled in his brain and he sat up abruptly, fumbling to prevent his open bottle from crashing to its death on the Raptor floor. A little shocked, Helo stared at Galen.

Galen nodded, clearly not realizing that the other man hadn't quite heard him. "Just a pregnant kid." He drank again, looking miserable. "I should never have touched her. Gods, Cally…"

"Whoa." If he recalled correctly, Cally was a dozen or so years younger than Tyrol, not that something like that really mattered. Especially not now.

"I always treated her like she was m' little sister, y'know?" Another swig. "Never thought of her that way, 'til…"

Helo let it go when Galen trailed off. Cally had never been on his dradis, not before the Cylons and certainly not after what she'd done to Boomer.

Boomer.

Reaching out for the jar of hooch, which Galen handed over without protest, Helo said, "You hate her because of Boomer." He drank again, more deeply than before and, gasping from the burn, handed it back to the Chief.

Galen accepted the jar, nodding, then winced and returned his head to the back of his chair. "She killed Sharon." He rolled his head to look at Helo again. "_My_ Sharon, anyway. But she did it 'cause she thought she was… protecting me."

"Protecting you? What, from the big, bad Cylon?" He started to say something sarcastic but stopped himself. Yeah, Boomer was a lot smaller than Galen and looked almost delicate at times, but she _had _shot the Old Man. _Gods, why does this all have to be so complicated?_

Tyrol snorted. "Yeah, the big, bad Cylon." He drank and held out the jar for Helo. "Maybe I'll marry 'er…"

That speculative statement made Helo sputter as he swallowed. "_Marry_ her? Cally?"

"Yeah. I mean, I _did_ get her pregnant. She's a good kid."

"Not necessarily the best reasons for getting married," Helo observed, thinking of _his_ Sharon, of the little girl they'd lost, wishing that it was possible for them to marry, wishing that she could leave that cage and live a normal life. He took another drink. _Frak. What's normal, anyway?_

"You gonna share that?"

"What? Oh! Sorry." Helo handed the jar back.

"Like I said, LT… _Helo_, I _do_ love her. I wanna do the right thing." Helo swiveled his chair around to see Galen more clearly, but nearly slid from the slick leather. He grabbed onto the arm and pulled himself back up to something that more closely resembled a seated position and the Chief continued, "My mother would come back and haunt me if I didn't do right by Cally."

Helo, on the other hand, just couldn't get past one thing. "She killed Boomer." He couldn't grasp how Galen could even be thinking of marrying the woman who'd shot the woman he'd loved.

"It's a frakked up world we live in, LT." He faced Helo, head still resting on the chair back. "So I guess this means you won't stand up with me at the wedding?"

Blinking rapidly, knowing he looked a little owl-eyed, Helo started to tell him that no, he couldn't do that, but then he stopped. After the third time attempting to say something, he finally settled for, "Galen, man, I don't know."

But then Galen smiled, the expression surprisingly sweet, given the stubble and the bloodshot eyes. "Aw, don't worry, Helo. I won't ask you to make that choice. Wouldn't be fair."

Helo breathed a sigh of relief and stood, almost steady.

"Hey," Tyrol said, sounding a little offended. "Where're you goin'?"

"You stay here." Helo lifted the jar and drained the last of it. "I'm going on a resupply run." He winked and made his way to the hatch, ridiculously proud of himself for not clipping a bulkhead on the way.


End file.
